


That Weird Landlord and His Equally Weird Friends

by SomeLadyOnTheInternet



Category: Leverage
Genre: Basically Hardison as landlord during seasons 2-4, Humor, I remember seeing a tumblr post ages ago, Just kind of ran with it, Minor Original Character(s), Original Character(s), outside look at the team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:08:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24350311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomeLadyOnTheInternet/pseuds/SomeLadyOnTheInternet
Summary: A new tenant moves into Hardison's building.  The other residents give him the gossip on the landlord and his friends.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 130





	That Weird Landlord and His Equally Weird Friends

Dan was thrilled about how his life was going lately: that nice promotion and boost to his paycheck had let him trade up to a better apartment in a new city. Right in the middle of Boston, above a pretty good bar, John McRory’s. His neighbors were great, too. The guy next door, some guy named Nate, was nice enough, though generally kept to himself.

His other neighbors were equally nice but a lot more social. Within the first few nights there, he got invited to drinks downstairs by five others in the building.

About an hour in, Dan was enjoying himself with some friendly chatter with friendly people. He looked up when he heard the front door, and saw his landlord, as well as Nate and three others settle at a table on the other side of the room.

“Hey, anything I need to know about my new landlord?” Dan nodded over at the table, where Hardison seemed to be typing something on a laptop while talking to his friends. “He was nice enough when I moved in, but I don’t know how he’ll feel if I’m late on rent. I don’t want to wind up accidentally saying or doing something wrong, getting the wrong person angry, and winding up in hot water.”

The others burst out laughing. 

“Get Hardison angry?” cackled Liza. “The man is so easy-going, I think you’d have to create some sort of supervillain-level plan to actually piss him off, and even then, I’m not sure it would work.” She took another swig of her beer.

“Mm, World of Warcraft can make him mad. I heard him arguing in the hallway once with Eliot about how it’s not just some dumb game and how the stats are nuanced or something,” Jane replied.

“No, that’s him annoyed. Not justifiably angry.” Steve chimed in. He set down his whiskey sour and turned to Dan. 

“Seriously, Hardison is basically the mellowest guy there is. Real nice. I’ve had to pay rent late a few times due to stuff like issues with alimony or that time the hardware store had a pipe burst and he’s never had a problem with it. Guy rich enough to own the building does not care if you’re short on money because he’s got plenty.”

“No way,” Dan said with a snort into his drink. “That’s the dream in a landlord. The dream landlord does not exist.”

“I’m telling you, he does. The guy is also an insanely good babysitter,” said Steve. “One time, I had to go in for a weekend shift since a coworker needed time off for her honeymoon. I’m at the mailboxes talking to Jane about if she or Liza could babysit, and Hardison says he can do it, no problem. I start trying to talk fees, and do you know what he says to me?”

Everyone chorused, “‘I already get money from you, I don’t need more money from you! Use that for something important!’” They all started laughing. It was pretty clear Steve had told this story before. Steve kept going.

“When I get home, Carly and Noah are facing off against him playing video games while he gives them tips on how to beat him. They’ve got their homework done. All of it, including Carly’s two minute animation assignment for her art class that she’s been stuck on for ages and that handout for that history project that was driving Noah crazy because the computer wouldn’t let him do what he wanted. The kids often ask about a rematch with Hardison whenever I have them for the weekend, and he’s even said yes a few times. Noah told me there’s never any buffering issues when streaming anymore and thinks Hardison is some kind of tech wizard.”

“Me neither, come to think of it,” mused Holly. “Maybe he is a tech wizard.”

“You never finished telling him about the payment thing,” Tad scolded. He turned to Dan. “So Steve comes back from the store, finds all this. Hardison’s character dies in the game, and he gets up to go. Steve is trying to pay him, barter him up from nothing to sixty bucks. Hardison won’t have it, says he’ll just count that as part of the upcoming rent. Steve, stubborn guy with a moral backbone the size of a house-”

“Hey!”

“-oh, you know we love it, big guy. Steve begs and pleads to do something, and Hardison just throws up his hands and says to treat him to a pizza and an orange soda sometime and left.” Tad laughed. “Tell Dan what you did.” He elbowed Steve.

Steve blushed and muttered, “I got it delivered to him for four days straight.”

Jane giggled. “It would have gone on longer, but Steve got an email from Hardison telling him to knock it off or he’d change his wi-fi password to ‘enoughwiththethankyousalready’ or ‘stopspendingmoneyonsomethingstupid’.”

“I still don’t know how he got my email,” Steve mumbled.

“But yeah,” Holly added, turning to Dan. “The only weird thing about Hardison is how nice he is. Also the tech wizard thing. Besides, his friends are way weirder.”

“What do you mean?” Dan asked. “Nate’s my neighbor, he seems normal.”

“I swear he’s moonlighting as Sherlock Holmes or something,” Holly told him. “One time he knocked on my door and offered me the best hangover cure I’ve ever had the morning after I got back from my old sorority’s reunion. No idea how he even knew. Not like I ran into him or told him or anything. Hell, I don’t even have a sorority sweatshirt or anything- only one I’ve got is somewhere in my parents’ attic.”

“I don’t care if he’s Holmes or NSA,” said Tad firmly. “He saved my brother’s life. Good enough for me, and I’ll fight anyone who’s sayin’ anything bad about ’im!”

“We’re not saying anything bad,” reassured Jane. “We like him, he’s nice, he’s just a little weird.”

“Aren’t they all,” Steve chuckled.

“How’d he save your brother?” asked Dan.

“Yeah, we haven’t heard this one. You’ve been holding out on us, Theodore!” Liza elbowed him.

“First name basis, Elizabeth, really?” Tad teased. His smile faded a little. “It’s not an entirely happy, to be honest with you. Part of the reason I never said anything is because Keith’s a pretty private person. Doesn’t like to talk about his problems, and also pretty prideful and independent. So Keith came for a visit and while he was there, it was pretty clear he hadn’t been feeling well. Said he was fine, maybe a slight head cold or something, it’s seasonal, yadda yadda. Thing is, he’d sweated through his pajamas and one morning he woke up with a fever. I tried to be all nice and do his laundry for him and he was trying to follow after me over to the laundry room and do his own damn laundry even though he looked like he was going to fall over. So he was leaning on the wall making his way down the hall yelling at me and I was yelling at him and Nate opened his door because he were passing right by him and making an unholy racket. Nate turned to yell at Keith, then he stopped and stared for a moment before helping him back to my apartment and having a quiet talk with him. Keith said Nate had said something about how he should consult an oncologist, even gave him a recommendation on who to see. We were both pretty surprised, but when we went to where Nate sent us, we found out Keith had a cancerous tumor. Doc told us it was lucky we’d caught it so quickly, since it looked operable and like it hadn’t spread too far. If we hadn’t caught it early enough, he’d have needed chemo. Keith’s in remission now. It could come back, but far as I’m concerned Nate saved my brother.”

A heavy silence descended upon the table. Tad ordered another round and sent a drink over to Nate, who raised his glass to him when he received it.

“Dan, I should tell you about the time my cat locked me out,” Liza spoke up.

Dan gave her a weird look while the others started giggling.

“Oh, that’s a fun story,” grinned Jane.

“The weirdest story of them all! The saga of Hardison’s weird friends continues!” Holly clinked her beer on Liza’s.

“Okay, so you’ve met Cutpurse, right?” Liza began.

“Yeah, but you never told me why you named him that,” Dan replied.

“He liked taking his claws to my handbags and almost made me lose my wallet once. Little guy hates strangers and only strongly dislikes me. He’s kind of a butthole. Anyway! He got into this habit of closing doors to entertain himself? I don’t know why it entertains him, but it does. So back in November, I was tidying up my door decorations from Halloween and I leaned down to grab the jack-o-lantern when I heard a wham behind me. I looked up, and Cutpurse had slammed the door on me. I hadn’t grabbed my keys since I was right next to the door. Didn’t think I’d need them.”

“Oh no,” Dan laughed.

“It gets better. This was shortly before Jane had moved in. She was still negotiating with her old landlord about her old lease and getting ready to move. Also, I had just started renting a few weeks ago, didn’t know anybody yet, so nobody had more copies of my keys… except one person.” Liza said with a smirk.

“Still sad I missed this,” chimed in Jane.

“Hush, you’ll get your chance to share your weird-landlord-friend story. I knocked on Hardison’s door, and he had company. Parker was sitting on the couch-”

“Who?”

“The blonde, has this way of looking at you like she knows all your bank passwords,” Liza jerked her head over at Hardison’s table. The blonde in question was staring wistfully at a lighting fixture that looked large enough to dangle from.

“So there I was, all embarrassed and stammering out that I was so sorry to bother him, and my cat locked me out, could I borrow his copy of my key, and so on. Hardison was being really nice about it when Parker interrupted and said she’d go sort it out. She asked which window was mine and started walking toward a room in back, calling out that this was a good excuse to use Hardison’s present from their last business trip. Hardison turned to me, said to just head downstairs and knock on my door, then closed his. Sure enough, I head down and barely knock when Parker opened it up while cuddling Cutpurse. He somehow really likes her. Impossible, but true. Parker put my cat back in my arms, said she loved his name, and walked away. Weirdest thing ever.”

“So I know the deal with three of them, but what about the other two?” Dan asked. “I know that the other woman’s some Scottish accountant, I heard her on the phone in the elevator once.”

“Scottish? She’s from Australia and she works as a talent agent, I heard her on the phone with a client once in the laundry room,” said Tad.

“I thought she was a news photographer from Georgia,” countered Steve.

“Maybe she’s from all of them and is holding a bunch of different jobs?” Holly guessed.

“I think she’s British and she’s probably an actress,” Jane answered. “Out of all of you, I think I’ve interacted with her most.”

“What do you mean?” Steve asked her. “I don’t think you ever said anything.”

“It’s a story I guess, but it’s not much of one. So a little after I moved in with Liza, I was let go from my job. Budget cuts, maybe a little nepotism. They decided I was the one worker too much, I guess. That meant lots of applications and job interviews for a few weeks. Thankfully, Hardison was really nice about it and said to just pay what I could when I could. Anyway, I am really, really bad at job interviews. Always have been. The morning of one of them, I was running a little later than I wanted to be and was struggling to do my makeup in the elevator and trying to take deep breaths and keep from panicking. That woman was in the elevator too, and after the third time I poked myself in the eye with a mascara brush, she asked if I was okay and wound up taking over the moment I said ‘job interview’. We got to the ground floor and she dragged me to a chair and fixed my make-up while giving me a great pep talk with a lot of theater terms in it. By the time she was done with me, I felt like I was on top of the world and looked like I’d just left a salon. She even got me a cab and not only did I wind up ten minutes early to my interview, I actually got the job there. She’s a nice woman.”

“They’re all nice,” said Holly with a smile. “Dan, you see Eliot over there? Only one we haven’t talked about yet. He taught me a bit about how to cook and still answers my texts when I have a cooking question.”

“That guy?” Dan glanced at the man. He seemed to sense Dan’s gaze on him, and gave Dan a look that would have scared a T-Rex. Dan quickly looked away. “He’s… er…”

“It’s okay, we all know he looks scary,” Liza reassured. “This is a fun story. See, a while back Holly was dating this chef- total patronizing snob-”

“François was not that bad!”

“You were too good for him, Holly,” Steve said apologetically. “He kind of knew it and basically got himself into some sort of unofficial contest for superiority with you.”

“Francis was pretty bad,” Jane agreed, patting Holly on the back. “He cooked for Holly a bunch of times and then basically invited himself over to her place and kind of goaded her into trying to make him food as fancy as what he’d been treating her to.”

“That’s pretty mean,” Dan frowned.

“It gets worse,” Holly admitted. “I usually cook your more basic fare-”

“Never uses her stove,” Tad teased. “She is a microwave chef, master of the frozen cusine-”

“Oh, lay off, I can make eggs and grilled cheese and stuff!” Holly laughed and shoved Tad. “He’s kinda right, though. I was trying for over a week to make something that would work well enough. But jumping from easy to expert is hard. I kind of made things harder with my homemade shrimp scampi-”

“She clogged pipes for the whole building and we had to get a repair man,” explained Jane.

“So I tried two more times. An Irish whiskey chicken flambé and a soufflé. I think you can probably guess how those went down.”

“Smoke detector?” guessed Dan.

“Mm-hm. Really embarrassing. Whole building had to be evacuated two days in a row. There I was in a stupid ‘May The Forks Be With You’ apron. It was pretty easy to tell who did it. I swear I felt like everyone was glaring at me, and they probably were.”

“I know I was!” Liza piped in.

“Oh you know what I meant,” grumbled Holly. “That’s not even getting into the most surprising part of the story.”

“I think ‘surprising parts’ make up like 90% of everything you guys have told me,” Dan chuckled.

“So anyway, the next day, I get a knock on the door, and I open it to see Eliot- not glaring at me, exactly, but…”

“He has resting bitch face, Holly, it’s okay to say it,” Liza groaned and rolled her eyes.

Holly took a sip of her drink the way people do when they’re trying not to address something that annoys them.

“Whatever, so I open the door and he goes, ‘You’re going to stop bothering everyone in the building with these damn cooking disasters.’ I thought he was threatening me until he pushed past me and set a bunch of bags full of groceries and a bottle of wine on my kitchen counter. Next thing I know I’m getting a lesson in making Chicken Marsala with a risotto and some spinach thing I don’t remember the name of on the side. Eliot didn’t leave until he was sure I had it all down, and I wound up making a beautiful dinner for date night. Every now and then, I try something new, but no more kitchen disasters anymore. Like I said, I still text him sometimes when I have cooking questions and I can’t get a straight answer from Google. He’s very reliable and no question is too silly or small- he even told me how to store my guacamole properly last week,” Holly reported.

“Are you and François still together?”

“Ha, no way, Dan. He wanted to go to some sort of fancy culinary apprenticeship in France and didn’t want to bring me along. Just as well, anyone who needs to change their name from Francis to François when they’re not even French isn’t really the kind of person you want to spend your life with.”

Dan stared at his landlord’s table across the room. In spite of everything he was just told, they still looked normal. “So…” he tried to summarize what he’d just learned. “Hardison is both a tech wizard and best landlord of all time, Eliot is less terrifying than he looks but could still probably throw down and cooks like a boss, Parker is some kind of spy probably, the brunette is either a spy or an actress or both, and while Nate is some kind of Sherlock Holmes and knows his alcohol but is still the most normal one out of all of them.”

Dan’s table paused.

“Pretty much,” agreed Jane.

“They also travel a lot, so you might not even see them as much as you think you will. But yeah, you nailed it,” Steve said with a nod.

“The blonde’s a spy, why did I never figure that out? Makes too much sense!” Holly exclaimed.

Liza gave Dan a supportive pat on the arm. “Welcome to Boston, pal.”


End file.
